Women Day Laborers Want Fair Wages

On a cold morning in the middle of November, over thirty women stood at the corner of Marcy and Division Streets in Brooklyn waiting for work. This is “La Parada,” as the Latinas call it, or “the stop,” and on some days as many as 150 women gather here from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. hoping to get hired for a day job.    

Most are Latina, but there are also women from Poland, Montenegro, Albania and Romania. The women may be hired to do housekeeping, residential construction, or food processing. The work they’re seeking has no form of regulation. The women are vulnerable and susceptible to wage theft, injuries, and more. They work without job security, a minimum wage, or safety precautions, and that sets them apart from most workers in the United States.

Yesenia Arias moved to New York City from Venezuela ten years ago. She has found work at La Parada for nine years.  The women who hire her aren’t always honest. She says, “Some of the women say they’ll pay fifteen dollars an hour, but then when you’re finished cleaning their house they find a reason to give you less. I don’t like working for those women but sometimes they’re the only ones offering work.”

The workers say that many of the women who pick them up are housewives from the nearby Hasidic Jewish community. Most of these housewives walk to the corner and negotiate with the women to clean for a few hours. The interaction between the prospective Hasidic employers and the women at La Parada looks like a scene from a movie. A woman wearing a head-covering and pushing a baby stroller approaches the corner. Within a few seconds, women flock around her. The conversations are a mixture of hand gestures and broken languages including, but not limited to, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Yiddish and English. Many of the Latina women will repeatedly say, “Quince, quince, quince,” meaning fifteen in Spanish, the minimum hourly wage that most of the workers want for housecleaning. But the housewife raises both hands, showing five fingers on one and four on the other, meaning she’s only willing to pay $9. After a few minutes, a Latina accepts the low offer and walks away with her employer for the day.

We tried to speak with these housewives who employ day laborers, but they were unwilling to talk with us. Bianca Lopez, an immigrant from Ecuador who has frequented La Parada for almost ten years, says, “These ladies don’t negotiate. Maybe you’ll get them to offer one dollar more… You can accept the nine dollars or wait for someone who’s offering more money to come by. But there is a chance no one better will come and then the day is gone and no money is made.”

Ligia Guallpa is executive director of The Workers Justice Project (WJP) that advocates for, and empowers, the day laborers. Both of Ligia’s parents were day laborers, so she is aware of the abuse these workers face. “The informality of the arrangements between these women and their employers creates a space for wage theft and other abusive practices,” she said. The WJP wants to create a job center that would improve the working conditions for these women by holding employers accountable and creating verbal or written contracts between workers and employers. It would also park a trailer at the corner where the women would have access to restrooms and protection from the weather as they wait for work.

In 2016 Antonio Reynoso, the city councilmember for the district, told El Diario that he supported female day laborers having “a space or job center to protect themselves from the rain and for their work to obtain its due dignity and respect.” The councilmember also said that he would help with discretionary funds and talk to the appropriate city agencies to get the workspace that the women are requesting for La Parada. “If the state is unable to move forward, the city will,” Reynoso said. When asked for an updated comment on the matter, a staffer from  Reynoso’s office responded that his stance remains the same.

Three years later, everything also remains the same for the women at La Parada. They still don’t have a work center or trailer to improve their working conditions and they say that the exploitation continues. Reform for these women won’t happen until they are given standards and protection like every other worker in the United States.